Vexing Problem of Who is a Jew Confounds Arab Terrorist Who Flunks Test

March 26, 1971

TEL AVIV (Mar. 25)

When is a Jew not a Jew? When he is a Palestinian terrorist posing as a Jew in order to get into Israel. Among the four terrorists captured Monday in the major encounter on the Golan Heights in which four of his fellows were killed, there was one who contended that he was a Yemenite Jew who had concluded that the best way to get a piece of the good life in Israel was to pose as a terrorist and cross the border. This he had done, complete with rifle and explosives. The Israeli officer in charge of the four prisoners decided to test him. First he asked him to read from a Hebrew Bible, but the man opened it from the left. Then the officer asked him to recite some Hebrew words, which he was unable to do. Finally the officer asked him to complete the sentence beginning “Shema Yisroel…,” but he could not do it and quickly confessed.